1. Field
The field of the presently disclosed embodiment is that of passenger vehicle cabin layouts.
The aspects of the disclosed embodiment more particularly concerns an arrangement of seats convertible into bunks particularly suited to the requirements of passenger cabins, for example aircraft cabins.
2. Brief Description of Related Developments
In the transport field, for example in the air transport field, it is known to arrange seats in successive rows placed alongside one another which are accessed via aisles in the direction transverse to the rows.
For economic reasons an attempt is made to place the maximum number of passengers in a given space and, as well as modifying the width of the seats, this entails reducing the distance between two rows of seats as much as possible.
The consequence of this is a reduction in comfort that makes long journeys uncomfortable and is moreover unacceptable for certain classes of passengers.
If the journey time justifies it, for example in the case of long-haul flights, it is known to offer passengers seats that can be converted between sitting, reclining and recumbent positions during the journey.
For this purpose it is known to produce seats where conjugate movements of the seat cushion, the seat back and a leg support to position these various parts of the seat substantially horizontal and in the same plane make it possible to form a surface to lie down on, where appropriate extended by a fixed footstool at the same height as the plane to lie down on.
However, to enable a passenger to stretch out despite the presence of other seats that can also assume the recumbent position, such seats require more room than non-convertible seats.
In order to limit the penalty of such convertible seats in terms of the distance between two rows of seats, it is known from European patent 2 507 131 to arrange seats 301, 302 in pairs 300 with convergent axes so that the feet of recumbent passengers are between the seat backs of the seats located in front of the pair of seats in question and, in order to limit the necessary distance between the seat backs, to produce planes to lie down on of two adjacent seats of a row at different heights so that the feet of two passengers on them are located in stacked footwells.
FIG. 1 shows one example of an aircraft cabin arrangement resulting from this solution.
This type of arrangement, which represents significant progress in terms of reducing the pitch of the seat rows in the case of high-comfort seats, nevertheless has limitations, in particular in terms of the arrangement of passengers' personal spaces, and this can make this solution less interesting for some passengers.